THE SCOPE AND SOURCES OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW IN NIGERIA

Intellectual property is an idea, a design, etc that somebody has created which the law protects by preventing other people from copying same.’ It encompasses such legal concepts as copyright, trade marks, patents, designs right and also includes rights against disclosure of trade secrets and unfair competition. It is a category of intangible rights protecting commercially valuable products of the human intellect, in a concrete or abstract form, such as a copyrightable work, a protectable trade mark, a patentable invention, or a trade secret,? etc. Because of the diversity of the field of intellectual property, it is incapable of a single generic definition that will cover the field. It is a term used to describe property rights in most of the human intellect.